Trapped in Ice

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

This historical drama is based on the Canadian Arctic Expedition of
1913–14, when Captain Robert Bartlett sailed the ill-fated Karluk
north with a party of 36. Sponsored by the Canadian government and
headed by world-famous Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the party
intended to explore, map, and claim new lands for the Dominion of
Canada.

With them went a widowed seamstress and her two children, 13-year-old
Helen and 11-year-old Michael. Helen, who loves stories and keeps a
diary, becomes the prism through which the reader shares in the
party’s hair-raising adventures and inner growth. Thanks to an early
freeze, the ship becomes trapped in ice north of Alaska, and the party
must struggle over shifting ice, by foot and dogsled, to Wrangel Island.


This well-researched narrative features believable, sympathetic, and
fully rounded characters who grow with the trials they endure. The
dialogue captures their widely divergent backgrounds.

There is fun here too, but fast-paced adventure and human interest are
the tonic notes. The details of survival on an old sailing ship in
bitterly cold temperatures are fascinating. During the party’s trek
over ice, Helen sleeps in an igloo, challenges a polar bear in order to
rescue her brother, and nearly freezes to death to save the dogs on whom
the party depends.

With its combination of realism and imagination and its large cast of
characters, Trapped in Ice will interest older children and teens of
both sexes. Highly recommended.